Sexualities

As a child of the early 90’s, internet porn grew up alongside me. Most American homes had dial-up modems on my thirteenth birthday; by the time I left high school, we were all but completely wireless. Pornhub and Xtube didn’t exist in 2005, yet they were two of the ten most popular websites on the planet on the day I turned eighteen.

The EMERGE (Engendering Men: Evidence on Routes to Gender Equality) project has produced a new policy briefing which makes the case for re-framing policy on gender equality in order to more productively factor in men and boys, and suggests actions and approaches that policy makers can take to do this. The briefing, along with an accompanying practice brief and a conceptual framing paper, is available here.

That we need to work with men and boys has become a key mantra of health programmes globally, particularly those concerned with HIV, violence and more recently sexual and reproductive health and rights, and yet there is very little known about how effective these programmes are, nor of the challenges, opportunities and politics of this work. A special issue of Culture, Health and Sexuality draws together a number of globally recognised authors to reflect on the field, as well as provide provocative insights into the politics and processes of working with men and boys.

The following collection of articles is based on a narrative study conducted with 75 South African men and women to yield more nuanced, diverse and contextualised understandings of men’s sexual and reproductive health (SRH) in order to provide a basis for addressing the gendered aspects of HIV prevention. The narratives highlight the diversity and fluidity of men and women’s lived experiences while also demonstrating the range of social and cultural norms that structure sexuality and SRH.

Until now, we’ve been far too comfortable with men occupying a lethargic role in the sexual and reproductive rights movement: that of passive allies. And while it’s imperative that communities and individuals most marginalized by reproductive oppression lead the way in building a new future, it’s also critical that we situate an analysis of masculinity in the reproductive justice framework, and equally important that men are enlisted to participate in that analysis.

For millennia, men and women have clung to the archaic attitude that sex is all about establishing and reinforcing boundaries. One of the most rigid stereotypes about sex is that men should always be the penetrators, and any man who gets penetrated is either gay or a "sissy." Dr. Charlie Glickman and Aislinn Emirzian examine some common stereotypes about gender, sexuality, and penetration in